Wall Street is showing little sign of turning against President Trump’s rally.
Investors pushed all three major indexes — the Dow Jones industrial average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq — to record highs on Wednesday and showed signs that they may not be ready to call it quits just yet.
The VIX, Wall Street’s so-called “fear gauge,” fell to 10.8, a 52-week low and the smallest reading since it touched 10.3 in July 2014, just as the Dow leapfrogged 17,000.
The VIX is an index of a blend of prices for a range of S&P 500 stock options. It is a much-watched measure of investors’ expectation of market volatility.
The lower the VIX, the lower the expected volatility and the more confident investors are.
“Call it complacency, call it optimism,” Jack Ablin, BMO Private Bank’s chief investment officer, told The Post.
The VIX level “reflects the view that the 2 percent [GDP growth] economy is going to be a 4 percent economy in a year’s time,” Ablin said.
By comparison, the VIX spiked to 89 in October 2008 as the mortgage meltdown grew.
As for the Dow’s rise, Ablin said, “20,000 is symbolic and could be incrementally bullish. Momentum feeds on itself and gets people off the sidelines.”
The 10.8 VIX reading on Wednesday is more impressive when you consider that, in 2014, it shrank to 10.3 in part because of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program.
The QE program held interest rates near zero.
The current market rally gained legs following Trump’s surprise win in the November election. Since then, the Dow has gained 9.4 percent.
“Look at the transition between Dow 19,000 and now. You don’t see this move very often,” Quincy Krosby, market strategist for Prudential Financial, told The Post.
Just 64 days ago, the Dow passed 19,000 — the second- fastest sprint between whole 1,000-point plateaus.
The rise from 10,000 to 11,000 in May 1999 was accomplished in 35 days.
While analysts concede that there may be a bit of a pullback from Wednesday’s high, they are still bullish.
“The market finds a new round number to resist and eventually support,” Bruce Bittles, chief investment strategist at Baird, told The Post.
Analysts also see other points of hope in this rally.
“The breadth of this market is really important,” Krosby said, citing the strength of industrials, financials and transport stocks.
Indeed, the Dow was led on Wednesday by Boeing, which shot up 4.2 percent, to an all-time high of $167.36, after revealing that its mammoth 787 Dreamliner turned a profit after a decade of losses.
Investors are also heartened in what they believe will be a more accommodative environment for business.
“The last eight years have been punitive for business — especially financials,” Christopher Whalen, an analyst at Kroll Bond Rating Agency, told The Post.
“The market is saying, ‘We believe in growth.’ The challenge is Trump has to deliver,” Whalen said.